Emergency answering service: what happens when a panicked customer rings

By Brodie Legget, founder of Johnni AI

Emergency calls are the ones you really can’t afford to get wrong.

Someone’s locked out with the dogs inside and the toaster still on. Or there’s water coming through the ceiling. They’re stressed and talking fast, and whoever picks up has a few seconds to work out what’s going on and get them to the right person.

Most people assume an AI receptionist can’t handle that. So instead of telling you it can, here’s a real one.

What you just heard

A lot happens in under a minute, so let’s go through it.

The receptionist picks up straight away with the business name and asks how the caller’s day is going. Not so good, it turns out. They’re locked out, the dogs are inside and they think they left the toaster on.

It doesn’t just push on with the normal script. It hears that this one can’t wait, says something a person would actually say (“Oh no, that sounds stressful”) and tells them it’s getting them straight through to the team.

Before it does, it squeezes in two quick things:

• it lets them know they’re on a recorded line
• it grabs their name and address, and checks the number they’re calling from is the best one

Then it puts them through. No “someone will call you back”. No form to fill in. A real person on the line, fast.

Why it takes details before it transfers

You might be wondering why it doesn’t just transfer the second it hears the word emergency.

It’s because you won’t always be able to pick up. You might be under a house or driving. If the call can’t reach you, you still want to know who it was and how to get them back.

So it gets their details first. That takes about ten seconds, and it means nothing gets lost whatever happens next.

What happens on your end

This is the bit I like most.

Your phone rings, and before the caller is handed over, the receptionist tells you who’s calling and why. So you pick up already knowing it’s a lockout with a toaster possibly still on. You’re not starting from scratch with someone who’s already stressed.

And if you can’t answer, the caller doesn’t get stuck on hold listening to music. They come back to the receptionist to leave a message, and the job gets flagged urgent so it’s the first thing you see.

You decide what counts as an emergency

Every trade has its own idea of urgent.

A locksmith wants lockouts put through, especially with kids or pets inside. A plumber cares about burst pipes and water where it shouldn’t be. And an electrician? Sparks and burning smells.

You tell it what matters to you in plain English, and change it whenever you like.

You also set when you’ll take transfers, separately from your trading hours. Maybe you’ll take emergency calls until 10pm. After that, it takes the details, flags the job urgent and lets the caller know when you’ll be back on.

It knows your state’s public holidays too, so once your hours are set right, it’s not going to ring you halfway through Christmas lunch unless you’ve told it to.

Why this matters more than a normal enquiry

Someone with an emergency doesn’t wait around. If nobody answers, they ring the next business on Google, and you’ll never even know they called.

They also need it sorted now, not next week. Those are exactly the calls you want answered properly, every single time.

If you want the bigger picture on calls that come in once you’ve knocked off, I wrote about our after hours answering service here.

A couple of things to keep in mind

Transfers need a number to go to. Until you’ve given it one, it takes the details and flags the job instead of putting anyone through.

And it’s not a 000 service. If someone’s actually in danger, they need to ring 000 first. What it does is make sure the urgent jobs for your business reach you, quickly, with everything you need to know.

Try it on an emergency of your own

Ring ours on 07 4519 7035 and pretend you’ve got an emergency. Talk fast, sound stressed, see what it does.

Or start the 7-day free trial, set up your own emergency rules and put it on your number. Everything’s on the pricing page.